Hi everybody.
Been a bit tardy lately where Chuffers are concerned - I've been busy three days a week at the charity bookshop, and then having to show prospective house-buyers around Ty-nant, which has involved hoovering and polishing and generally tidying up.

I did find time to call in at Pat and Mary's for coffee on Tuesday morning. I took along the usual pot of clotted cream, on the off chance that Pat had made scones...

Even better, as well as scons (skones?) he had made some strawberry flans as well!
My goodness me...

The colesterol has gone off the scale!

More from Chessboard House later on in the blog.
I don't know if I had mentioned previously that Chuffer Mike, up un the foothills had grown a beard?
The similarity to Father Christmas is striking. On a trip up to the village of two saints this week I caught this picture of Mike during a tour of the house extension:

The resemblance is uncanny...



Back in Pat's railway room, Mary had been busy with an old set of Bayko building bricks - who remembers them? come on own up!
Anyway, Mary constructed these two buildings to go on the 0 Gauge layout:

Which Pat duly put through its paces.
No sound on the first clip - I managed to mute the original recording but never had time to find a suitable soundtrack to dub on to it. Here we go_

The second one is noisy! some of you may remember it as being part of the working display that used to be a feature of the Castle Kitchen Restaurant a couple of years ago.

The final clip of the 0 Gauge layout is a freight train trundling around the inner loop whilst the express continues a circuit of the outer ring.
Again, this is muted, but nothing dubbed yet (it does take some time to do)

We end with Llechryd.
Last week Emyr and I went to Login with Emyr's van and collected the Kilgerran and Cardigan layouts, to free-up room in preparation for the big re-vamp.
Kilgerran is now in Cilgerran Village Hall waiting to be set up, whilst Cardigan is here in the garage set up on a support stanchion displaying its nether regions for a bit of tidying up.
That will be our project for the ChufferDuffer meeting here tomorrow evening.
Chicken, fennel and pepper have already been prepared to go with pasta...

That's it for now - comments welcome, as always


Cheerio,

Shaun.

Good morning. Well, it is morning as I'm writing this, though 'good' is exaggerating things somewhat.
Storm Ellen is currently rollicking her way through the county and already has hit the Login marquee that Peter hired out to the Shire farm. Pete is going to inspect the wreckage today...

I went over to Login last week with the plans for re-vamping the Cardi-Bach Museum and took the opportunity to keep in step with Peter's progress on his Lynton & Barnstaple layout.
It is still covered in snow, but contours are gradually appearing.

Here is a shot of Woody Bay:

And an opposite view of the goods sheds and siding:

You will notice that the backscene has been renewed, as the previous one developed wrinkles (like so many of us do) and nothing could be done to eliminate them. However all is now well.




Moving around the layout there is the start of a farm, made from a Scalescenes kit. Ignore the barn and the terrace in the background, they are just there to get some idea of positions.

Further around we get to Lynton, yet to receive a coating of 'snow' but already the infrastructure is in place and shaping up nicely :

A couple more vehicles have appeared on the scene - an AA van and a traction engine with caravan:

Being confronted by a belligerent ram, by the looks of things....












I mentioned at the start of this post a plan to revamp the Cardi-Bach Museum. We have had a chat amongst ourselves, and this is what we have come up with.
An end to end depiction of the line from Whitland to Cardigan running around the walls - in N gauge, and not quite as detailed as the present layouts, which although authentic representations were more model railway orientated than historic exhibits. These will be preserved elsewhere.

Below is a scale model of how we envisage the new arrangement to look:

ChufferDuffers convened at Colin's this week, and we enjoyed pork pies, sausage rolls and Marianne's excellent salad
A visit upstairs to Colin's workshop to see the latest 'Dolgoch' locomotive:

Another view of Herrington Light Industries incredible workmanship, this time with a coin of the realm included to give an idea of the size of this model.

Colin had also made a small slate flat to go behind the new Hudswell loco that has joined the Teifi Gorge stable.

And as we like shots of work benches, I could not resist a couple of pictures of Colin's!!!

'Order comes out of chaos' - supposedly said by the philosopher Nietzsche...


Nothing more for this post, so I'll bid you good-bye...
Thanks for logging on,
Shaun.

Right boys.
The blog is going back to just featuring the exploits of the Chuffers.
Nothing was happening with the Cardi-Bach on the secretarial front - I found that it was more satisfying to go outside and bang my head against the garage wall. We will continue with the Society, but a good long chat with members is needed to chart a course...

The good news about the old Series I land rover of Emyr's. The engine is complete, and running sweet as a nut! One or two minor water leaks, but soon rectified.
Next comes the wiring. The proverbial 'rats nest' as I understand it...

No more photos, because for once I was without my trusty little Canon. I'll make sure we get some pictorial evidence next posting.

I did manage pictures of the latest layout exploits.
We'll get the little stuff out of the way first, and then move on to the big boys' toys.

The Llechryd extension of the Teifi Gorge Railway is forging ahead.
The friends of Llechryd were given a small plot of land by the side of the station, so the good ladies of the parish created a garden for contemplation...

Meanwhile, the Bowen family who farms the land in the immediate area moved a flock of sheep into the small meadow between the rail-yard and the river:

Their intention was to have the prize herd of Welsh Black cattle in the paddock across the railway line, but they had to wait, as there was the sound of a train coming through the cutting from Cilgerran.
Da Bowen and his son Idris stood by the gates whilst daughter Gwyneth kept an eye on the herd...
(The horses were also interested in the goings-on)

Back in the real world, I managed to get some clear acrylic sheet from our good friend Chris, of 'Mikes' shop in Cardigan, and have started on a protective barrier around the layout - protection from small fingers, rather than Covid19, you understand.

That's enough of the tiny narrow gauge stuff - on the big old Hornby Three Rail!
You have to be of a fairly senior disposition to remember, but it should take several people back to their childhood.

In the last post, I showed pictures of Pat's new railway room, with an embryo layout framework taking shape. Since then Pat came over here to Llechryd to cut the baseboard tops and transported them back to Cilgerran in the van.

In the short space of time since then, Pat with the able assistance of Mary, has completed the framework and topped it off with the plywood - he couldn't wait any longer and promptly laid a test track and had trains running!
Coffee morning on Tuesday was spent taking little video clips.
I haven't had time to edit them, so excuse the raw filming and audio!

That was the 'Duchess of Sutherland' plus some Pullman coaches going around.
Next up we have a very smart 4-4-0 in scarlet livery pulling a couple of clerestory coaches.
There is a quick glimpse of a rather portly figure at the end...(editing will remove that)

One quick clip of the GWR 'Banana' auto coach, and then we'll move on to something even more nostalgic.
Here comes the flying banana:

That was just some of Patrick's electric Hornby Three Rail stock.
He also has an extensive collection of clockwork driven engines!


Two quick (and I mean quick in every sense) video's of a couple of the wind-up 0-4-0 flying around the track.

Good... hey? Here's the second one. After that, I'm going to start cooking my tea. I've been spending long enough on this!

Cherrio 'till the next one.
Shaun.

Right then. Time for another episode in the adventures of the ChufferDuffers...

First of all, a bit of movement in the Cardi-Bach den. The dragon stirs!

There was a 'Zoom' meeting about the feasibility study regarding making the old line a foot/cycle path.

First step would be for the three Councils (Pembs/Carms/Ceredigion) to agree to the project, and allow funds to be made available...

(Don't call me cynical).

Next step would be to get in touch with the landowners (93 of them) with the possibility of acquiring the trackbed in question.

Did I mention cynical?

The aforementioned funds needed are quoted as £5.25 million. Yes, I'm afraid I'm cynical. Sorry.

I won't whomp on anymore - let's move on to Chuffers!

Off to Emyr's first of all - not a lot of progress with the Landy, as his family were at last able to visit, and after several months without seeing the grandchildren, vehicle renovation took a back seat.

Anyway, here is a quick shot of how it looks at the moment:

After a quick visit to Emyr, it was along the village to Pat and Mary for coffee and scones. My friend Alun had made some fresh raspberry and blackberry jam, so with some clotted cream from Aldi, the coffee went down well.

Pat is going to put up a permanent three rail 0 gauge layout in the new railway room. In the meantime, he had laid out the track roughly and had a 'Battle Class' loco running around.

We have an unedited video...

We paid another visit to Pat's railway room last night, and he and Mary have already started on the framework for the baseboards and layout (we do not know who was labouring and who was supervising. Tactfully Colin and I refrained from asking...)

Here are a couple of shots of the framework:

This being a ChufferDuffers night, we went into the annex for DVDs, homemade pizza and the usual French red laughing water.

In the annex was Pat's heritage layout, so I took a couple of pictures:

The AA van:

The convertibles:

And the hotel:

We also managed a noisy (I don't have time to edit it at the moment) video of the layout:

This layout is, I think purely for Pat's enjoyment, as nothing is stuck down. (as I found to my cost when I accidentally nudged it!)

Colin, (he of Herrington Light Industries fame) presented us with another of his exquisite 009 locos for the Teifi Gorge. This time a kit-built engine rather than scratch built.

Which segues nicely on to the closing pictures, where we go back to Llechryd, and the latest progress on the Teifi Gorge extension. I scratch built a small ground frame type signal box:

And an engine shed plus a loco servicing area:

There we are folks, the Chuffers antics to date so far...

Cherrio,

Shaun.